Oh, how I wish that this were an April Fools’ joke. Below is a picture of the newsflash from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas for the month of March. Can you see anything wrong with it?

You mean aside from “Womxn’s Herstory,” “Queering Leadership,”

and “Transgender & Non-Binary Swim?” Yes, about a thousand things.

You know, it’s pretty difficult to make fun of someone who is already a walking self-parody. But it’s not nice to make fun of the mentally ill, anyway. If you think that this poster is an exception–some sort of extreme case, I envy your blissful ignorance. No, this blend of insanity is common to virtually all universities, and it has already begun to spill over into everyday life. In California businesses are required to label unisex bathrooms “All Gender,” and nowadays in common speech many persons use the made-up, meaningless term “gender-neutral” instead of the actual word “unisex.” This all stems from the belief that gender and sex are not synonymous, and in fact have nothing to do with each other. This belief requires you to know absolutely nothing about Biology or Psychology, and those persons who are ignorant enough to not even know what gender is are the same persons who want to use political force to run your life. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let me talk about the reasoning behind such word choices as we see in this poster.

The word “man” means “homo sapiens, person, human being.” In Old English, the word for an adult, human male was “wyr.” From this was derived the word “werewolf,” which means “wyr (adult human male) wolf.” The female version of a werewolf would probably be a “wifwolf,” with “wif” being the word that eventually became “wife” in Modern English. It wasn’t until around 1200 AD that the word “man” became as popular as the word “wyr” when referring to an adult, human male. Today we still have both definitions; the term “men’s fashion” refers to fashion meant only for wyrs, while the term “mankind” refers to all humans, male or female, immature or mature. The word “woman” comes from “wif” and “man,” so that it means “adult female person.” A woman is a man, but a very specific man–an adult female man. Certain persons in universities were clever enough to notice that the word “woman” contains the word “man,” but were not smart enough to look into its etymology. They decided that it would be cool and clever and funny and empowering to instead write the word as “womxn,” and in doing so, they unintentionally imply that wifs are not humans. But if they are not humans, then why should we care about their rights? A similar linguistic blunder is to be found in the word “Latinx,” which isn’t pronounced the way you think–it’s actually pronounced “Latin-Ecks,” as if it were a secret government project. They did this in order to make the term Latino “gender-neutral,” but they never thought to consult a Spanish dictionary or an actual Latino/Latina. Anyone who speaks Spanish could tell you that the term can either be masculine or unisex, and for the plural, Latinos must be used unless everyone in the group is female, in which case the term Latinas is employed. These folks don’t even consult the groups that they claim to be advocating for!

These same escaped mental-asylum-patients also noticed that the word “history” coincidentally contains the letters “h-i-s,” so they thought that it would be cool and clever and funny and empowering to replace “his” with “her,” but they didn’t even do that properly. If they replaced “his” with “her,” then the word would become “hertory,” not “herstory.” But the biggest problem here is that the poster celebrates “womxn’s herstory” during the same month as the “non-binary swim.” If gender is a spectrum of infinite possibilities and biological sex is an illusion, then there is no such thing as a “womxn.” This train of thought, belonging to a movement called “Social Justice,” neither understands nor properly uses words, and this is intentional. By using deliberately incorrect meanings of words, social justice warriors hope to twist and control the way that everyone thinks. It is an emotional manipulation tactic that works extremely well. By controlling the meaning of a word, the social justice warrior does what is called “framing,” and this can subtly alter the way that you think if you’re not careful. A debate is much easier to win if one has already built the frame in which the debate will take place. Philip K. Dick said it best when he said, “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” Along those same lines, George Orwell wrote, “There is no swifter route to the corruption of thought than through the corruption of language.”

For example, take the term “reproductive rights.” Any sane person would think that this means that everyone has the right to reproduce, and so forced sterilization is an evil that must be prevented/stopped. But when SJWs (social justice warriors) use it, they are referring to the “right” of a woman to receive contraceptives that are paid for by others, and the “right” to murder her unborn baby. By using the word “right,” SJWs emotionally manipulate the less astute among us into going along with their agenda, or at least become too ashamed to stand up against it. After all, who would publicly declare that they oppose rights? So, if you allow SJWs to control the discussion by controlling the meanings of words, then without even noticing it, you’ll be on the losing side of the debate before it even begins. You’ll constantly be on the defensive and you’ll be required to explain why you don’t oppose human rights; then you won’t have any time left over to actually tackle the argument itself. The main problem with the argument is that in reality, there are no reproductive rights, there are no women’s rights, there are no minority’s rights, and there are no gay rights. There are human rights. If a woman is a human, then the term “women’s rights” is redundant because she already has human rights. The term “women’s rights,” or “reproductive rights” or whatever other term, implies that either women are not human, or no one else is. The result ends up being special privileges for certain groups. But this I’ll get to later.

For another example, take the word “offensive.” The word “offense” is synonymous with “attack” whereas its opposite, “defense,” is synonymous with protection. In a battle or sports game there are two sides–the offensive and the defensive. It is impossible to unintentionally attack someone. It is possible to unintentionally hurt someone–say, if you inadvertently step on someone’s foot–but it is impossible to unintentionally offend someone. “Oops, I accidentally poisoned my husband’s dinner, stabbed him in the chest 58 times, and asked a friend to help me formulate an alibi while disposing of the body. Whoopsie doodle!” Just as you could accidentally hurt someone physically, you could accidentally hurt someone verbally. If you were talking to a friend and you said something about their father who, unbeknownst to you, had just recently died, it is probable that the mere mention would cause grief to well up within your friend. In such a fragile and emotionally vulnerable state, hurt could happen. But it is the height of absurdity to say that just because you become upset at something, that it is offensive. Something can only be offensive if it is meant to be. I always enjoy it when someone tells me that I am offending them, because I respond, “Prove it,” and I get to watch them stutter and sputter for a few seconds afterwards in pure bafflement.

Some words are more sophisticated because they are built upon a “philosophical” foundation. Take the word “racism.” The definition of racism is, “The belief that ethnic background determines thoughts, beliefs, and actions; or the belief that a certain ethnic background is better than others.” But the definition that social justice warriors give is, “Prejudice plus power.” By using this false definition, they can then claim that it is impossible for someone to be racist against a white person, since according to them whites are inherently powerful. (This is the philosophical foundation that I was referring to. In order to say that racism is prejudice plus power, you have to first believe that some group inherently has all the power.) What you may notice about this line of thinking is that it is horribly racist. The belief that whites are inherently powerful conforms to the secondary dictionary definition: “the belief that a certain ethnic background is better than the others.” If whites automatically have power, then it’s best to be white. The belief that it’s best to be white is shared by the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis, and the prophet Muhammad. There is also the ridiculous assumption that the victim of prejudice is not being acted upon by power. If someone is being prejudiced against you, then they are acting with power against you. Whether it’s effective is beside the point. And it goes without saying, that racism against any ethnicity is still racism. To believe that someone can be exempt from something because of their skin color conforms to the primary dictionary definition of racism. If ever confronted by an SJW, seize the opportunity to define “racism” before they get a chance to. Define racism as “prejudice minus power” and when they ask you where you got that definition, say “I made it up, just as you made up your definition.” When they complain and say it’s not fair for you to make up a definition, pull out a dictionary and show them the real one. But when you do so, be prepared for the SJW to criticize the very concept of a dictionary. The Facebook page “The Virtue Beacon” brilliantly satirizes this in the post below.

This belief that whites are inherently powerful is part of a complex, all-encompassing philosophy (although “religion” or “cult” are more apt terms) which preaches that white people are everything wrong with the world today, that white people have brought nothing but death and misery to the world, and that only in the past few decades have “we” managed to make the world a better place by criticizing, “deconstructing,” and undoing the evil things that white people have done. Among these are slavery; supposedly slavery was invented by evil white Europeans in the 16th century in order to feed the hunger of Capitalism, which enslaves the world and makes it an awful place to live. Basically, whatever is false is a part of this Progressivist religion. This belief of white imperialism is thoroughly white-supremacist and Euro-centric because it assumes that anyone non-white lacks the humanity to be capable of evil. I haven’t room here to explain why the Progressivist view of history (pardon my sexism; I mean hertory) is wrong, and indeed entire books have been written on the subject. Suffice it to say, however, that just as with any cult, the believers of Progressivism have no interest in facts. Their only purpose is to destroy.

And that brings us to the question of “why.” Why do they do this? The answer is simply to destroy. Throughout the large-scale experiment that was the 20th century it became abundantly clear that Marxist ideals are all false. Karl Marx’s book The Communist Manifesto was released on this day in 1848. It was the deadliest April Fools’ joke ever perpetrated on mankind. Today, Socialists (or Communists, or Marxists, or Fascists, or whatever they wish to be known as) shrug off the 100% failure rate of Socialism by claiming that it wasn’t “real” Socialism. Socialists are the economic/political equivalent of flat-Earth believers. You’ll never be able to convince a flat-Earther of anything because they see flatness wherever they wish to see it, and reject curvaceousness wholesale.

Throughout the existence of the USSR, socialists all over the 1st World praised the USSR for being a shining beacon of socialism. The infamous “Democratic Socialist” Bernie Sanders infamously made a speech in 1988 in which he gave a glowing review of the USSR’s socialist characteristics, and three years later the USSR finally collapsed. Since that time socialists have been denying that it was “real” socialism. The same thing happened with Venezuela. When Maduro took over and sharply turned toward socialism, countless socialists in America and elsewhere praised him for making Venezuela a prosperous, thriving, socialist utopia. When the steam ran out a few years later and Venezuela became so poor that average citizens resorted to cannibalism, socialists rebuffed with, “Well, that isn’t real socialism.” Countless other examples may be furnished, but I wish to instead look at what was going on behind the scenes during this time.

When it was clear even to university faculty that Marxism and all its derivatives were universally and tragically ineffective, the intelligentsia, rather than admitting that they were wrong, simply changed the labels that adorned their sacred texts. “Revolution” became “deconstruction.” The contest between the rich and poor became, more broadly, the contest between the oppressor and the oppressed. There is no middle ground. Rather than seeking to understand how and why Europeans were able to escape the grinding poverty and pagan stagnation that plagued every other continent on Earth, the Marxists simply chalked it up to power: power unfairly won and unfairly maintained, because Marx wrote that all of history is a power struggle, so that’s what we will believe. Success is not the result of Christian values or hard work. no, it’s the result of privilege. Therefore, the only way that we can create a better tomorrow for the unprivileged is to make life worse for the privileged.

“Privileged” is a prime example of a false word in the SJW’s lexicon. You may notice right away that this word is a passive participle. Being passive gives this word an accusatory tone. If someone else gives you special treatment (which is the dictionary definition of privilege) then it is their fault, not yours. By saying “You are privileged,” instead of “Others give you special treatment,” SJWs seek to elicit guilt in their opponents. They are, in essence, engaging in a behavior that they claim is deplorable: victim-blaming. “How could one be a victim of privilege,” you may ask. Well, what if you don’t want to be privileged? What if you are so laden with guilt at your privilege that you desperately wish you could cast it away? Well, you can’t. According to the holy texts of Progressivism, if you are white or male (or a few other things) then you are born with privilege because of the institutionalized power structures benefiting you. Because the nebulous “institution” has decided to benefit all whites, then if you are white you benefit from privilege and white supremacy whether you want to or not. Many SJWs who fit these physical traits do feel terrible guilt for existing, so they try to undo some of the damage by being active SJWs and advocating for those who have no privilege.

Not only is this insulting and racist and sexist, but it also hearkens to an old concept coined by Rudyard Kipling: “the white man’s burden.” Kipling wrote that because white men have Christian ideals, advanced civilization, culture, technology, modern medicine, and so on, we have a duty to travel to all corners of the Earth and teach the uncivilized savages how to behave, and to share our enlightened ideas with them, and to advocate for them both among their local disputes and among our fellow white brothers. SJWs today carry out a similar sort of duty, speaking for “oppressed” groups such as “Latinx” and “womxn,” and telling everyone how they ought to behave, including the groups being advocated for. If a woman wishes to be a stay-at-home mom, SJWs will say that she has “internalized patriarchy” and will tell her what to think and how to feel. If a black person doesn’t vote Democrat, SJWs will call him all manner of vile names. They might say that he is “colonialized,” or they might call him an “Uncle Tom,” which is meant to be an insult but is actually a very high compliment, as anyone who actually read the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin knows.

If privilege is special treatment, then the way to get rid of privilege is to treat everyone equally. Unsurprisingly, SJWs consider this oppressive. They insist that if “minority” students didn’t have affirmative action, that they wouldn’t be able to get into college and get a good job. Or in other words, those poor black fools need the white man’s help because they are too incompetent to achieve success on their own. SJWs insist that persons ought to receive help based on certain physical characteristics. In other words, SJWs wish to secure privilege for a certain few, rather than equal rights for all. They wish to accomplish the opposite of what they claim to be after. I’ll talk about “Horseshoe Theory” in a short while. But first, I must make note of the absurd obstacle course built by the pursuit of “equality via privilege.”

True equality is the equality of opportunity, not the equality of outcome. Every human is unique in his or her own way. We all have different talents and to different degrees. Some humans can run more quickly than others, for example, so equality would be achieved by having every runner start on the same starting line, not by putting lead weights on the ankles of the fastest runners. But at least in that case, there is only one characteristic being measured and thwarted: speed. In the bizarre world of Progressivism, SJWs tire themselves by tallying up Oppression Points in order to determine how they ought to think and behave. If you are a womxn, then you get one Oppression Point because institutionalized Patriarchy automatically benefits men and oppresses wxmxn. But if you are a black wxmxx, you get two Oppression Points because institutionalized Racism benefits whites of all genders. If a white wxxxx and a black wxxxx disagree, the black xxxxx wins because she has more Oppression Points. A black, disabled, transgender, transage, transracial, queer, otherkin with social anxiety disorder and PTSD outranks everyone else. But if you are a straight, Latxnx mxn and you disagree with a white, gay mxn, who wins? We might need to bring in the referees to break the Oppression Point tie. As a side note, have you noticed that mixed-ethnicity persons such as Barack Obama refer to themselves as “half-black” instead of “half-white?” Why is that? Well, it’s quite simple. There’s nothing to be gained from identifying as white, because whites have no privilege.

So what would the final result be of all this tallying? When an enemy king and his generals surrender then a peace treaty is signed and the war is over–there’s no question as to when the soldiers can go home and leave their weapons to rust in the armory. But when will Social Justice be achieved? The answer, of course, is never. There will always be power disparity in society because of the innate, inherent inequality of humanity. The only place you’ll see perfect equality is in a cemetery. The skeletons are all equal. But even then, some of them have a nicer tombstone to rest under. Progressivism can only work like a see-saw, giving privilege first to one group, then to another. If SJWs have it their way, whites will eventually be treated like outcastes, forced to cling to whatever crumbs fall from the table. Eventually someone may say that it is wrong and give privileges to whites, so that the see-saw will tip in their favor again. So from now until Judgment Day, SJWs will not be able to rest from their toil, constantly tallying and wondering and frothing at the mouth. It must be exhausting. Imagine watching a movie and counting how many lines the leading black character has compared to how many lines the leading white character has, or counting how many “minority” characters are included, or so on. Wouldn’t it be nicer to just watch and enjoy the movie?

And it is not just in the university that this takes place. Progressivism, not content to turn universities into horrible indoctrination camps filled with the dregs of society, has spilled over into the real world and is carving a path of destruction even as we speak. Anyone who states beliefs that go against the Progressivist doctrine are shunned and may even lose their jobs. Countless dissidents have been banned from social media and other websites, and some are often doxxed (Doxxing means posting someone’s personal information such as their phone number, address, etc. so that others can harass the victim and possibly his/her family). Fortunately, this is not without its backlash. The phrase “Get woke, go broke,” alludes to the tendency of businesses to lose a large amount of sales and customers after publicly endorsing a Progressivist position. Although SJWs are very powerful, at the moment they seem to have power equivalent to a band of raiders or pirates– they can do quite a bit of damage but would be no match against a militia or army. But we cannot assume that the pendulum will swing the other way. SJWs are religious zealots and will not give up. We must actively fight against them.

Speaking of pendula, there is a phenomenon called “Pendulum Theory” or “Horseshoe Theory” which not only shows just how ridiculous Progressivism is, but also allows us to see its true colors as a deadly, fascist religion of death and destruction. I mentioned before that SJWs are white supremacist because they believe the same things that the KKK and Nazis do. Many SJWs also oppose miscegenation because they consider it “sexual colonialism,” and this too agrees with the anti-miscegenist belief of KKK members. The two sides use a different term (KKK members have never once said the words “sexual colonialism”) but they come to the same conclusion. Another example is to be found in the condescending treatment of those with mental disorders.

SJWs argue that someone with PTSD or Schizoid Personality Disorder or whatever else doesn’t have the responsibility to take control of their life and act in a moral way. They might say that if someone is “triggered” by a word, image, or action, then they have no responsibility to cope with it; everyone else has a responsibility to accommodate the person who is triggered. First, any competent psychologist would tell you that this is very unhealthy and will actively hurt the individual in question. Second, this argument is indistinguishable from the crudest rhetoric that was used to justify locking the mentally unsound in cages. “Lunatics are always dangerous. They have no control over their actions, and they can’t be taught how to gain control. For the good of society, they must be imprisoned.” In this case, the initial belief is the same but the result is different. The SJWs, rather than saying that the mentally ill out to be unfree, instead suggest that everyone else ought to be unfree.

I did not make the charts below, but I’ve had them in my computer for so long that I can’t remember who did. Sorry about that. Anyway, let’s look at the progression of Horseshoe Theory. It is referring specifically to the SJWs on the website tumblr.com, hence the name “The Tumblr Model.”

When your beliefs are true, they will always be consistent and unchanging. When your beliefs are false, then they are necessarily inconsistent and are easily subject to change. This is why SJWs often end up believing either the opposite of what they preach, or believe the same things that their opponents do. They love to argue that America was a peaceful, prosperous land before the evil Europeans came along and committed genocide against the Native Americans and brought slavery and all that, so in effect the SJWs are throwing their support behind ethnic homogeneity and closed borders, two things that they claim to vociferously oppose.

SJWs are some of the most revoltingly racist persons on the planet, and because they are religious zealots, they are so deeply indoctrinated that they are incapable of self-awareness. They believe that they are fighting a war against racism, so when you tell them that they are racist, they go ballistic. Believe me. I’ve done it. Their “anti-racist racism” can appear in different ways.  The first is by unintentional caricatures. Donald Trump gave a speech in which he denounced globalist bankers hellbent on destroying national sovereignty. His critics immediately assumed that he was talking about Jews (Please click that link for a good laugh). They criticized Trump for being “anti-semitic” because–obviously–evil bankers intent on world domination could only mean Jews, right? Here’s another example:

I have news for you. If you see a hideous black demon and you instantly think, “Oh look, an African person,” then you are the racist.

A second category of SJW racism is to be found in criticisms of “the system” that make racist assumptions about “the oppressed.”

They also often project their own racism onto others.

Then there are the patronizing congratulatory comments that praise “the oppressed” for having the mental functions of normal human beings. The two photos below show what I mean:

It’s not going viral because it’s just a picture of a family reading.

Are you surprised to find that there are black people who are literate?

“Look, everyone! I found a negro who can fly a plane just like a human being!

I bet that I could teach her how to roll over and play dead too!”

Oh, yes. Another thing that SJWs love to do is to use the disgustingly racist term “colored person” as if it were the 1940s. They think that by reversing the word order so that it becomes “person of color,” the term is no longer racist. The term itself, whether “colored person” or “person of color” is segregationist, separating everyone on Earth into either “white” or “colored” and ignores individual identities and achievements. This ties into the Horseshoe Theory portion earlier, in that white supremacists also believe that it’s “us versus them,” “whites versus coloreds.” But because SJWs are not hooked up to a collective consciousness like the Borg, they are not always in harmony with each other. Perhaps our greatest allies in the fight against Progressivism are Progressivists themselves. They love to eat each other alive, and every day brings an exciting, new civil war. Here’s just one example:

If you’re wondering what the word “othering” means, don’t waste your brainwaves.

It’s just another made-up, meaningless Social Justice word.

Here’s another example. SJWs can never be satisfied, and they will never stop complaining or trying to destroy everything that is well-intentioned in the world. I saw a beautiful dispute between SJWs over an individual who, either sarcastically or insanely, identified as some sort of transsexual cyborg, and had fake horns installed on its forehead. In the comments section the SJWs were attacking each other over whether this was inspiring and heartwarming, or blasphemy to Progressivism. This sort of situation is perfectly satirized in this scene from Kimmy Schmidt.

Tragically, because Progressivism is a sick cult, SJWs cannot be reasoned with. They will always see evidence to vindicate their beliefs. Look at the handy flowchart below for an example:

And there will be consequences. Earlier, I said that a band of pirates may cause some damage to the civilians they attack, but no band of pirates is a match against a professional army. Well, the easiest way to beat an army is to place pirates among its officers. Once the SJWs have control of politicians, they can force their political correctness onto others. You see, the concept of “political correctness” did not just form on a college campus somewhere in the 1990s. The term was used to refer to the Communist Party line, which explained which thoughts and opinions were “correct.” In short, wrote Theodore Dalrymple,

Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

There is nothing new going on, and the tactics being used by Progressivists are the same ones they have been using for decades all around the world. They silence, bully, and threaten those whom they disagree with.

And here lies the great irony. The people who are the most opposed to free expression are the same people who want to express themselves as freely, outrageously, and disturbingly as imaginable. Self-expression is a right that they want to keep all to themselves. The rest of us must express ourselves in a way that conforms precisely to their wishes. They demand that we adjust our language — adjust our perception of reality itself — to meld with their delusions. “Here is the script you must follow,” announces the man who refuses to even follow his own biology.

• Matt Walsh

SJWs constantly decry “institutionalized racism” and “institutionalized power structures” but they never specify what exactly the “institution” is. This is because it’s only reasonable to argue that getting rid of the institution would get rid of the institutionalized evils. But getting rid of the institution is the last thing that SJWs desire. They wish to preserve, protect, and perpetuate the institution–the only difference is that they desire control of it. Thus we hear about “hate speech” laws being written and enforced, and many others being lobbied for. What is important to understand is that the term “hate speech” is meaningless until defined by whoever has the power. Really, saying “certain speech should be censored” is itself hate speech, because it is hateful to censor someone. But you’ll never hear an SJW say that censorship is hateful or a violation of human rights. That’s because there are no rights except what the party tells you. Thus even the most egregious human rights violations can be shrugged off as “protecting the oppressed” or “moving society forward” or any number of lies. If you think that this is an exaggeration, please refer to my article on Identity Politics. Nazis were blatant SJWs. They supported the censorship of “offensive” ideas, increasing marginalization of the “privileged” Jews, collectivist “us versus them” slogans, and so on.

Fortunately we do see some backlash in American society, and I believe that the election of Donald Trump as president was a direct expression of backlash against Progressivist propaganda. Now, I don’t support any politician, and I certainly don’t support Trump. I’m merely saying that his “no nonsense” demeanor, his blunt style of speaking, his rejection of most Progressivist talking points, and so on, curried favor with a majority of voters who saw in him the ally that they desired and needed. But SJWs do not sleep. They continue to destroy lives wherever and whenever they can. Not even a week before the writing of this article, a gas station owner lost his partnership with Sunoco for an allegedly racist and bigoted billboard that he paid for. What did the billboard say? It said, “Whites have rights, too!” In the eyes of an SJW, saying that a person has human rights regardless of skin color is a great evil that must be punished.

Whenever you see a Sunoco gas station, please keep in mind that they openly and proudly oppose human rights. But it’s not just them. SJWs are slowly but surely working to take over every industry in the world. SJWs are an insidious disease, a hideous, cancerous growth that threatens to destroy civilization unless the sane act to reverse it. It is still possible at this point, but difficult.

This may seem like an overreaction, or even hysterical. That’s what the reaction is everywhere, until the tipping point has long been passed. No, I don’t think that civil war is just around the corner. In fact, we’re nowhere near that point (probably). But by the time we finally do get there, it’s probable that most of the population will have been disarmed so that they can’t fight back. And this will all be possible if we allow power-hungry lunatics to usurp the proper meanings of words, with which they may control the conversation.

 

“The Barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him — that he can have his cake and eat it too.  He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being.

Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marveling that civilization should have offended him with priests and soldiers… .  In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true.

We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.”

– Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc